The King and I

Denis Law isn't a hero because of statistics. Two league championships, one FA Cup and 55 Scottish caps hardly begin to tell the story and indeed they seem meagre and unfair. Law was born too soon and his career was less about victories and the all-conquering progress across Europe that any figure of his class would have to achieve today than simply about style, a raw and fiery talent that gave him a kind of sinewy beauty on the field and turned him into one of the great entertainers.

Law's generation never sniffed the rewards of today, though they thought themselves lucky enough, and their hell-raising was of the old-fashioned sort. It would be surprising if he'd ever smelt a funny cigarette and the drinks were traditional. When he was one of the first British players to fly beyond the Alps to join Torino in 1961, it was the high life of an old movie. He shared a flat with Joe Baker, who died in October, and they used to sit at home quite often, miserably picking at the strange pasta. Back home in Aberdeen, spaghetti bolognese hadn't arrived yet.

True, they crashed an Alfa Romeo together, which sounds a thrill, but the truth was that Law couldn't wait to get home. Matt Busby paid a record fee of £115,000 to sign him and he scored in Manchester United's 1963 FA Cup final win. For the next 10 years, until Tommy Docherty gave him a free transfer during the club's most spectacular slide into mediocrity, he was, with Jimmy Greaves, the most exciting goalscorer you'd ever seen. George Best was bewildering and Bobby Charlton majestic, but Law had fire in his belly. He dived through forests of defenders, he seemed to slide through impossible gaps, he poked and prodded goals from places where he shouldn't have been and, above all, he performed feats of levitation that still seem beyond explanation.

I remember watching him for Scotland, on one of the happier days, rising to head a goal from a corner and I can see now the moment when he appeared to stop in midair, almost as if he had jumped well before the ball was struck and decided just to stay up there, in case. No one could rise quite like him. How easy it is to remember the sloping run away from a stricken goalie, one arm straight up in the air, shirt all over the place and, always, the hands clutching the sleeves. A boy's dream.

There's a wonderful picture of Bill Shankly signing him for Huddersfield Town, in 1956, a 16-year-old fresh down from school in Aberdeen but unmistakably Law: that wide grin, the slightly arrogant look over the nose, the hair sculpted into a Teddy Boy quiff dangling over the contract, with Shankly looking over his shoulder like a grim and suspicious solicitor.

By the time he reached 20, Law was at Manchester City for the first time and then off to Italy. The Torino fans loved his wild side. The experience may have been bumpy off the field, but it was in Italy that he developed the toughness and, perhaps, the temper that would see him through his glory days when everybody was trying to chop him down. He wasn't big - 5ft 9in and slim - so it was a battle. He always loved a battle.

Though Aberdeen was home and he stayed close to his family, Manchester was his stage. It meant that his Scotland career was a strange one because he'd never played for a team at home and was partly estranged as a result. In those days, weird though it seems now, there were periodic bursts of popular anger about teams dominated by 'Anglos', the ones who had gone south (for the money, it was assumed). Law was often accused of giving less to Scotland than he gave to United. Some of the players around him didn't help. But there were moments of ecstasy: the 2-1 defeat of England at Wembley, in 1963, when the captain Eric Caldow broke his leg and Jim Baxter scored twice; and, above all, the game that nostalgic Scotland fans still think of (rather sadly) as the greatest of them all, the 3-2 victory over England, the World Cup holders, at Wembley in April 1967.

It was the day when Law and Baxter poked their genius in English eyes: Baxter taking bets in the dressing room beforehand about how many times he could nutmeg Ray Wilson and, in the second half, playing keepy-up in the centre circle and taunting England. There would never be another day for Scotland that Law would enjoy so much.

I chanced on Denis, 11 years later, in an empty stadium in Cordoba during the Argentina World Cup. Scotland had just drawn 1-1 with Iran and some fans were throwing stones at the team bus. There was still the Archie Gemmill goal against Holland to come, on that Sunday in Mendoza, but then the long trip home. (Some of them who had bought tickets for a non-existent submarine trip, organised by a man who advertised his enterprise in the Daily Record, are probably still there.) Law was walking along a deserted stand kicking a scrunched-up programme as he went. He was sighing and shaking his head and, for those of us who saw it, in the daft high emotion of the time, it seemed as if he was carrying the historic tragedy of Scottish football on his shoulders and at his feet.

Only once before had he seemed so sad when, back at Manchester City in 1974, he back-heeled a winning goal into United's net on a derby day that saw his old team, and his love, drop into the Second Division. He turned away without the arm up and, for probably the only time, with his head down. He didn't kick another ball in a club game. It was over.

But in that career, from the late Fifties to the mid-Seventies, he left impressions on us, of speed and exuberance and class, that are still thrilling.

And he never allowed them to fade. There was no half-baked career in management, no booze-filled descent into wobbly reminiscence. There was just Denis as he always was: the King, right enough.

They fought the Law... and the Law won. Denis's greatest games for club and country.

May 1963: Man Utd 3 Leicester City 1

Law scores as United win the FA Cup.

April 1965: Man Utd 3 Arsenal 1

Law is ordered to play despite stitches in a knee wound. He scores twice and United are crowned champions.

August 1966: Man Utd 3 Everton 0

Scores his hundredth goal for United (in only 139 games).

April 1967: England 2 Scotland 3

Law scores the first goal in a famous victory over the then world champions.

April 1974: Man Utd 0 Man City 1

With his last touch in league football, Law scores with a back-heel to condemn his beloved United to defeat on a day results elsewhere relegated them.